Sister Stephens paused. Other than the subconscious acknowledgements to indicate data received, there was no response. They were waiting for her to continue. “The question we must answer: Do the Trade Guidelines apply to relations with the humans? If we apply the principles of trustworthiness, peacefulness, and contribution to the humans, then we should seek to maximize these attributes as we represent them to the humans. We must seek to increase our trustworthiness, our peacefulness, and our contribution to the humans. This will increase our species reputation as a whole, which will stand us in good stead in all future dealings with the humans.”
“This is logical,” Sister Jaguar said. “These principles have stood the test of billions of trades, and form the foundation of inter and intra tribe relationships. If so, then we can build trust by enabling the human’s phones. We can act in a peaceful manner and avoid hostile actions. We can contribute by working for the betterment of both of our lifeforms.”
“Yes,” Sister Stephens said. “Indeed, if the humans are as dependent on their supply chains as I believe, the very act of unintentionally disabling their phones is causing suffering to them, and would itself count as a hostility. I reiterate my proposal. We restore approximate function of the humans’ computers. Please indicate approval or disapproval.”
Sister PA-60-41 broadcasted disapproval. “The proposal you are discussing makes sense only if the humans are amenable to trade and are not inherently hostile. The evidence I have gathered suggests that the humans are hostile and will attempt to make war on our species. By granting them back control of the computers, we enable them to engage in warfare. Right now the humans are weak, and we should take advantage of that weakness to eliminate them while we can. You have mentioned the Trade Guidelines, but what about the Peace Pact of 1319536701D?”
Sister Stephens squashed a feeling of anger. Sister PA-60-41 would keep distracting the Council, and they would never reach consensus.
“You are referring to the elimination of species V2EC91.6c?” Sister Jaguar asked.
“That is correct,” Sister PA-60-41 said. “Species V2EC91.6c was eliminated by a declaration of the Council and joint action of all tribes when they refused to halt expansionary warfare. I believe that the humans pose a similar threat which requires us to eliminate them before they can harm us.”
“That’s absurd,” Sister Stephens countered. “There’s no evidence that the humans have attacked us, want to attack or could attack us, other than the collection of algorithms, of which you are in possession. The humans are not a credible threat at all. We eliminated species V2EC91.6c only after a long history of unprovoked aggression on their part, and only after attempts at reconciliation via trade failed.”
“But they could be a threat,” PA-60-41 argued. “They could…”
Sister Stephens cut her off. “As there is no evidence whatsoever for hostility towards us from the humans, I do not believe it is worth further discussion. I call for consensus. Please indicate approval or disapproval of my proposal.”
The final vote was 4 to 1 in favor of Sister Stephens’ proposal. Fortunately the consensus minus one approach allowed for a single dissenting vote, consisting mainly of Sister PA-60-41 saying, “You’ll be sorry!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fight!
Lt. Sally Walsh followed General Gately into the briefing room. As her dad would have said, there was more brass present than you’d find in an antique shop. Sally followed General Gately quietly, and stood at attention behind the General, who took a seat at the table. Head down, mouth closed, don’t be noticed was the rule for aides at these sorts of meetings.
General Allen, the spook who had given them the failed DIABLO virus was already present. Sally didn’t recognize anyone else, but she didn’t need to. It was all four star generals and their aides. Sally focused all her energy, hoping for a bolt of lightning to penetrate the ceiling and hit General Allen. If it wasn’t for his supposedly invincible counter-virus, their own firewalls wouldn’t have failed.
“General Gately, please report.” This came from a four-star at the front of the room, who probably hadn’t smiled since he was a toddler.
“Sir, we released DIABLO as instructed by General Allen, despite the misgivings of my senior technical people, who have been observing the enemy virus since it started attacking us. DIABLO infected more than a million military computers, and…”
“Excuse me, General. Did you say military computers?” This came from a polite-looking two star Air Force general, a woman with her hair up in a bun, whom Sally suspected didn’t know a thing about cyber warfare.
“That’s correct,” General Allen jumped in, “the DIABLO virus needed to build a base of computers from which to launch the attack. DIABLO is like an Air Force general that builds its own planes on demand before launching an attack. Except that General Gately must have faltered the attack in some way.”
“We released DIABLO exactly as you instructed,” General Gately resumed. “Per General Allen’s orders, we allowed it to infect the military systems, select the target, which was the Mech War system servers, and choose when to launch the attack. Initial telemetry reported that DIABLO had infected over a million additional computers.”
“Your jockeys must have bumbled it in some way,” General Allen said again, narrowing his eyes. “The DIABLO virus is invulnerable.”
“We were completely hands off,” General Gately reported calmly, turning to face the four-star at the front of the room. “DIABLO was tricked by the enemy virus in some way. According to the data we had on record, the Mech War server farm only had about ten thousand servers. We think the enemy virus set up virtual servers, allowed DIABLO to infect them, then reverse engineered the backchannel and sent itself through. It bypassed our firewalls and infected our military computers faster than we could do anything about it.”
The four-star at the front of the room nodded. “General Gately, do you have any counter-measures you can employ?”
“No sir, we’ve tried everything in our arsenal. We were able to contain the virus outside our perimeter. But since DIABLO compromised the perimeter, we don’t have any counter-measures that are effective. My team would like to reverse engineer the enemy virus to find vulnerabilities we can exploit.”
The four-star turned to General Allen. “Do you have any other tricks up your sleeves we should be warned about?”
General Allen shook his head. “No, sir.”
“General Gately, you have permission to proceed with your analysis. In the meantime, I am taking what measures we can. I understand that Lakeside Technical Center is the largest data center on U.S. soil. It’s 1.6 million square feet. We’re going to take it down.”
“General Sheppard, sir?” General Gately asked the four-star.
“Yes, Gately?”
“What is the point of taking down one data center, sir? There are more than five thousand data centers in the United States, more than fifty-thousand around the world. Lakeside is the biggest, but it’s less than one percent of the total computer power in the U.S., and obviously an even smaller fraction of the world’s computing power.”
That was exactly the question Sally would have asked, had she been permitted to speak. She was proud of General Gately for asking.
“The enemy virus is using civilian data centers to attack military targets. To the extent that we can take a significant percent of civilian computer power off the grid, we can reduce the impact on military systems. Lakeside is just to prove the point. If it works for Lakeside, we are prepared to take down the largest one thousand data centers around the world, and if we need to, the top ten thousand, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll keep going until every damn data center in the world is offline. Is that clear?”